Social Business Today

Monday, 3 October 2011

TabVertiser.com Helps Businesses Turn Facebook Fan Pages into Revenue

A new online service called TabVertiser.com (http://www.tabvertiser.com) is providing businesses with a way to easily buy and sell advertisements on Facebook, the popular social networking site, with just a few simple steps.

"No matter its size, every business has to carefully consider where it will spend advertising funds," said Ken Li, owner of TabVertiser. "Facebook has emerged as a valuable advertising channel because of its enormous user base, more than 750 million active users at last count. We help businesses to either find Fan Pages where ad placement will provide optimal outreach to prospective customers or use their own page to generate an additional stream of revenue via ad sales."

According to Facebook's statistics, 50 percent of its active users log on to the networking site daily. And since 70 percent of Facebook users are outside the United States, potential advertisers can even target international audiences.

In order to keep its process user-friendly from the very beginning, TabVertiser has made its website accessible to individuals right from their Facebook accounts. "We use the OpenID authentification process for an easy login experience but our security measures ensure that users do not have to worry about their information," explained Ken.

Selling Ads on Facebook

Once sellers log in to TabVertiser's member area, the system fetches their Facebook Fan Pages, also known as just Pages, from their account so that they can decide which would be suitable for selling ads. Next, sellers choose which of TabVertiser's pre-made layouts they want to have on their selected Page. Once they have selected the layouts, sellers set the price for each ad in the layout based on the ads' position and size.

Buying Ads on Facebook

Like sellers, buyers can simply login to the TabVertiser member area with their Facebook account. TabVertiser's search feature enables buyers to find the Facebook Pages that reach audiences who will be most interested in the product or service to be advertised. Buyers simply use the search filter to specify location, fan count or category. For example, an individual wanting to place an automotive ad could look for Fan Pages in that category, determine how many fans each Page has, the country in which the creator of the Fan Page is located and the number of ad spaces available.

From the available ad spaces, buyers can choose the size and position that will allow them to display images, text and links in the way that they feel will most effectively appeal to their prospects. For example, a buyer may select a 250x250 square positioned as a right header. Buyers can also see the monthly price and the period for which they can run their advertisement.

Interested individuals can receive updates and notifications by registering for the TabVertiser newsletter athttp://www.tabvertiser.com.

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XBOX Live Rated As Safest Social Network

Only two out of nine social networking services, Habbo Hotel and Xbox LIVE, have default settings which make minors’ personal profiles accessible only to their approved list of contacts, according to a new round of tests undertaken for the European Commission. The two services have been suggested as being the safest social networks available by the self-regulatory “Safer Social Networking Principles for the EU” agreement.

However, a majority of sites tested do give youngsters age-appropriate safety information, guidance and/or educational materials specifically targeted at minors and respond to requests for help. Seven sites responded to requests for help, a majority in less than a day. Two sites (Dailymotion and Windows Live) ensure that minors can only be contacted

by default by friends via public or private messages. In all the sites tested, minors can be sent friend requests by anyone. On six of the sites, minors’ profiles can be directly accessed by friends of friends. All sites tested provide a shorter and more child-friendly version of their Terms of Use or Service.

Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission for the Digital Agenda said: “Young people enjoy and derive great benefits from social networking online but are often not conscious enough of risks such as grooming. Social networking sites need to take seriously their responsibilities towards these youngsters. I intend to address these issues later this year in a comprehensive strategy on making the internet a safer place for children through a combination of protective and empowerment measures.”

The report looks specifically at implementation of the Safer Social Networking Principles for the EU by blogging (Skyrock) and videogaming (Xbox LIVE) platforms, photo and video sharing platforms (YouTube, Dailymotion, Flickr), virtual worlds (Habbo Hotel, Stardoll), platforms that have some social networking functionalities (Windows Live) and platforms that allow the creation of personal profiles with the possibility of uploading blog entries, photos and updates (Yahoo! Pulse). The tests were carried out between March and June 2011.

The Commission is reviewing protection of minors online from such risks as grooming and cyber-bullying as part of the objective set by the Digital Agenda for Europe to enhance trust in the internet. The results of the two surveys of implementation of the Safer Social Networking Principles will be taken into account by the Commission in a comprehensive initiative to empower and protect children when using new technologies due later this year. Electronic Theatre will keep you updated with all the latest details on the Xbox LIVE videogames platform, and other online services designed for safer interactive entertainment.

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Social Media News Site Gains Clout

Pete Cashmore acknowledged he was nervous. Only a few years ago, he was living with his parents in a small town in northeast Scotland, trying to start a technology blog. Now, at 26, he was about to interview Elie Wiesel, the 82-year-old Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, onstage at the 92nd Street Y, about the future of ethics in a digitally connected world.

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Pete Cashmore started Mashable to write about the new world of social networking.

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

An editorial meeting at Mashable. The site has about 40 employees, most working from new offices on Park Avenue South.

But Mr. Cashmore, the soft-spoken chief executive of Mashable, the one-man blog he turned into a popular news site about social media and digital culture, appeared totally at ease during the lively conversation. And within half an hour, an important measure of success was achieved. Mr. Wiesel, who wondered aloud during the talk what might have happened if Moses — and also Hitler — had used social media tools to get their messages across, was trending worldwide on Twitter.

“It just shows the acceleration of the global conversation and that Mashable is a force online,” said Mr. Cashmore, whose company worked with the United Nations Foundation and the 92nd Street Y to organize the four-daySocial Good Summit in Manhattan late last month.

Standing backstage in a crowded green room with other speakers, including Geena Davis, Lance Armstrong andSerena Williams, he looked up from his smartphone after checking how the conference was doing on Twitter. “We are more important than Charlie Sheen right now,” Mr. Cashmore said. “It shows how we can steer the conversation to help the world. We are a very new brand, and I think that this adds a great deal of legitimacy to our cause.”

For Mr. Cashmore, the cause has been explaining how online social connections are fundamentally changing the way people communicate, a concept that prompted him to start Mashable at age 19. Bored by schoolwork, he skipped college and began writing about how people were using technology and the new world of social networking. Because he was fascinated by the way some sites were mashing together maps and data — in particular a combination of Google maps and data from the Chicago Police Department — he named his new blog Mashable.

Soon the blog was generating $3,000 a month in advertising revenue, allowing him to hire another writer.

Chronicling the rise of social media platforms like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare and Google Plus, Mashable steadily increased its audience. In June 2009, it became the most popular technology blog when its Web traffic surpassed that of TechCrunch, according to Compete and Quantcast, two social media measurement firms.

As portals like Yahoo scramble to hold onto an audience that is becoming less drawn to general-interest news, Mashable, Business Insider and Gawker are among a group of smaller niche sites with devoted audiences that are appealing to advertisers. Analysts credit much of Mashable’s rise to its skillful use of search optimization and a large catalog of articles about how to use social media tools. Then there’s Mashable’s influential online audience, which shares and distributes its links across the Web, further fueling the site’s growth.

“Pete and his team understood how to use social media when a lot of people were still trying to figure out what it was,” said Staci D. Kramer, editor and executive vice president of ContentNext Media, which publishes the popular blog Paid Content. “That made a huge difference. They were able to parlay that cachet and knowledge into a visible role as an ambassador of social media.”

This role has enabled Mashable in recent years to form partnerships with big brands and traditional media organizations, like CNN and USA Today. Disney World joined Mashable last May to sponsor a conference on social media in Orlando. Aaron Sherinian, spokesman for the United Nations Foundation, said it made sense to work with Mashable at the 92nd Street Y because of its online audience.

“Our mission is to help the United Nations tell its story,” he said. “Power is shifting, and we want to help the U.N. break out of its walls and engage with the people who want to engage with them. And if someone is going to start a digital Davos, it is Mashable.”

Mashable, which is privately held, now generates enough revenue from display advertising, custom programs with marketers, event sponsorships and conferences to support an operation of about 40 employees, most of them working from new offices on Park Avenue South. Mr. Cashmore would not disclose revenue or operational expenses but said the site did not rely on private investors for financing. The company has financed its expansion, he said, by steadily increasing revenue and carefully managing expenses. Mr. Cashmore said there were 17 million unique visitors last month, according to Google Analytics.

Mashable’s prospects for greater success and growth, however, are unclear, given the ever-changing digital media landscape. To help increase its audience and create new opportunities for advertising revenue, Mr. Cashmore expanded Mashable’s coverage last month, adding new sections for entertainment and United States and world news. He also hired Lance Ulanoff, 47, the former editor of PCMag.com and senior vice president of content for Ziff Davis Web sites, to oversee news coverage.

By hiring a veteran journalist, Mr. Cashmore said he wanted to move toward delivering more original reporting. But building a robust site based on original content is costly. The site is not yet known for its deep reporting, and in fact could suffer from a lingering impression that it is sometimes cheerleading for social media rather than providing critical analysis of them. “As much as I see them break news, I don’t think of them as a breaking news site,” Ms. Kramer of Paid Content said.

John Borthwick, chief executive of Betaworks, a company that both invests in and works closely with Internet start-ups in New York, praised Mr. Cashmore for expanding content beyond technology because of the appeal to advertisers. He also endorsed the decision to proceed without outside investors.

“It has not held him back,” he said. “As an entrepreneur, you maintain control of your own destiny.”

Mr. Cashmore is also looking to social media platforms to find creative ways to work more closely with marketers. In February, he ended Mashable’s arrangement with Federated Media, the publishing network, and Mashable now manages its own advertising sales.

To lead the effort, he hired Ken Detlet, a Dow Jones advertising sales veteran. Mr. Detlet will work with big consumer brands like Ford, General Electric and Samsung on getting consumers to share information about products in the same way they share content.

For advertisers looking to reach a socially influential audience, Mashable is a good fit, saidIan Schafer, chief executive of Deep Focus, a digital advertising agency. “For reach, and from an authority standpoint, they own the audience,” Mr. Schafer said.

But he acknowledged that expanding the site would be harder than starting it. “It is no longer just about the quality of their audience, it is about the size now,” he said, adding that it was difficult to “grow very quickly and maintain quality.”

Mr. Cashmore acknowledged the challenge, but said he was struck by something Mr. Wiesel had said about the importance of waiting, a concept that seems to be disappearing, he said, during this time of rapid change.

“Waiting has value,” he said. “And some things change and then there are things that stay the same.”

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Delta expands its social media customer service

Delta Air Lines has taken a new initiative to expand its social media customer service. The airline has introduced its Spanish language assistance channel,@DeltaAssist_ES. Delta Assist is Delta’s programme designed to help customers with real-time travel issues via its social media channels like Facebook and Twitter.

The airline shared that its new channel will operate very similarly to its @DeltaAssist channel when it was in its infancy.

“We’re launching this programme as a pilot, operating a Monday through Friday schedule to help us gauge volume and demand, and test the waters a bit,” wrote Jerry Fletcher, manager – Delta Assist, on a company’s blog.

As with @DeltaAssist , the airline says its @DeltaAssist_ES agents can:

Answer questions about Delta policy and procedures
Assist with lost baggage
Rebook a canceled flight
Help customers affected by general service failures

In March this year, the airline became the first airline in the world to offer a dedicated customer support product on Facebook.

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Facebook Launches New Metric: “People Talking About”

Facebook has overhauled its Pages Insights analytics tool and added a new metric to gauge the health of a page: “People Talking About.”

That statistic, which users will see on Pages below the total number of “Likes,” will be one of four tracked by Pages Insights. The idea is that users will understand a Page with a high People Talking About rating is one that has compelling content. Likewise, content creators will be motivated to make their Pages more comment-worthy.

People Talking About (that might not be the final name for the metric; at press time, Facebook wasn’t sure) will measure user-initiated activity related to a Page, including posting to a Page’s Wall, “liking,” commenting, sharing a Page post or content on the Page, answering a Question posed to fans, mentioning a Page, “liking” or sharing a deal or checking in at your Place.

The other metrics, which are designed for administrators of brand and media Pages, include “Likes,” “Friends of Fans” and “Weekly Total Reach.” While “Likes” is self-explanatory, Friends of Fans is the actual number of friends your fans have, and weekly total reach is designed to be an accurate assessment of how many total people have posted something about your Page, how many news organizations (within Facebook) have referenced it and how much viral distribution elements of your Page has gotten.

David Baser, product manager for Pages Insights, says that despite a raft of new activities that Facebook will be introducing soon under the Facebook Gestures banner, those four metrics will remain and the “Like” will maintain its ranking as a top measurement. “Likes are an expression of identity,” Baser says. “It’s a user saying that I have a relationship with this brand.”

In addition to tracking the four metrics, Pages Insights will also offer a deeper dive into data around specific updates. Facebook will list your last 500 posts (the company began tracking them in July) and count the total number of engaged users, People Talking About it and virally. The latter measures the percentage of users who commented on the post.

Sentiment, however, will not be part of the calculation. Whether a user is lauding a comment or trashing it, it will count the same.

Facebook Insights Main Page

Facebook's primary Insights Page will measure "Likes," Friends of Fans, Weekly Reach and "People Talking About" the Page.

Facebook Insights: Reach

Facebook will now offer a deeper dive into your Page's reach.

Facebook Insights: Post Analysis

Facebook will also offer more visibility into how your post performed, including its "virality," i.e., the percentage of people exposed to the update that commented on it, "Liked" it or had some other kind of interaction with it.

http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business

Sunday, 2 October 2011

For small businesses, social media fuel sales

MIAMI — Laid off after 23 years in the mortgage- lending business, Dede Parise couldn’t find a job. So, she took a marketing class to reinvent her career, and before long, she turned an assignment into a company.

Parise invented the “Bandee,” a headband women wear while playing golf or other sports. She sells her product mostly on the Internet, working from home.

Her audience is vast, and growing. In a year, using Facebook, she has parlayed her reach into 15,000 fans.

For small businesses such as Parise’s, social media have become a portal to success.

“It’s really important,” said Parise, 49, of Weston, Fla. “It’s just the way the market has gone.”

The use of social media by businesses is booming.

According to a recent study by EMarketers, 80 percent of leading companies will participate in social-media marketing in 2011, nearly double the number from three years ago. And a 2011 Social Media Marketing industry report by SocialMediaExaminer.com found that 90 percent of marketers said social media are important for their business. Eighty-eight percent said it generates more business exposure, and 72 percent said it brings increased traffic to their website.

The most-commonly used social-media tools, the 2011 report found, are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs, in that order.

Parise didn’t have — or even want — a personal Facebook page a little more than a year ago. But she knew she needed one for business.

Now, she said, Facebook is the main contributor to the worldwide reach of her sales.

“Sometimes they say, ‘I saw you on Facebook,’ ” she said.

When Kelly Lyles launched a website in July to begin selling her invention, “Tip Top Shoe Savers,” she went immediately to social media to get the word out, garner feedback and drive customers to the website. She posted on Twitter and Facebook to pique interest in her product — small shoe forms that women can place inside their pointy shoes to avoid creases and preserve the tips.

“One person putting a ‘like’ on your product or your page reaches hundreds of people because someone will see it on their page and say, ‘I like that,’ ” said Lyles, 34, of Aventura, Fla.

What’s more, Facebook gives her a weekly update of how many people visited her site and how many people “liked” her product.

And she can link Facebook and Twitter, so that her postings go out on both.

“So, if I say, ‘Come visit Tip Top Shoe Saver at the Summer Sale,’ it goes out to Twitter,” Lyles said. “It’s cross-promoting.”

Even more-established companies that sell to other businesses can get a boost from social media.

“It is a way to keep people engaged with the website and engaged with us,” said Valerie Holstein, chief executive of CableOrganizer.com, a 9-year-old Fort Lauderdale cable-management products company with 45 employees and $16 million in revenue.

“Customers use it to get tips and use it to tell their other friends if they are happy with the product,” said Holstein, 36.

Social-media users say it’s amazing how fast businesses can gather followers.

Holstein said that when CableOrganizer.com redesigned its 2-year-old Facebook page, it got 250 “ friends” in two days.

http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business

Blogger Outreach 5 Top Tips To Help Find The Influencers You Need

Some of the most respected influencers on the Internet today were viewed as illegitimate sources just a few years ago. You know them as “bloggers.” In a recent Technorati poll, more than 40% of those surveyed stated that their views closely align with those of bloggers, while their trust in mainstream media continues to wane.

For those who seek to market a product or service online, this is the perfect moment — many of the top industry influencers are also the most accessible. A single relationship with the right blogger could lead to thousands of instant relationships with targeted readers who fully trust that particular source; not to mention the back links. Unfortunately, the hunt for the right blogger can be a job all its own. Here are five tips to help make the hunt for the perfect blogger a bit easier.

1. Look Right Under Your Nose

Simply scouring the web in search of the right blog can result in an overabundance of bloggers ill-matched to your business. Why search aimlessly when some bloggers have done a lot of the work for you? Review your site for comments, revisit old emails and check for Twitter mentions where a blogger may have already reached out to you. Bloggers who have made the effort to engage you have proven they are diligent marketers and will help get your brand seen and heard once you collaborate.

2. Reference Blog Directories

Browse Technorati, review Alltop, crawl BlogCatalog and search Alexa to determine who is the big blog in your field. Find the top influencers in your industry, research them and move in for the kill. If there is a blogger you wish would highlight your business, but you feel they are too big to conquer, search the content of their blog for mentions of smaller, yet related blogs that you can successfully connect with. Once you have built relationships with these smaller blogs, you can return to the once-unapproachable site with some posts under your belt that are worthy of mention.

3. Help a Reporter Out

Join HARO, a service that compiles lists of queries from reporters and bloggers who are seeking experts willing to share their experience, tell their story or sell their product. HARO sends out thousands of daily requests directly to your inbox and can often be better than the best of leads. Since 2008, HARO has published more than 750,000 journalist listings, including many from The Huffington Post and Lifehacker, all of whom need someone like you to complete their post. This tip is a must — it’s free and extremely useful.

4. Utilize a “Blogger Dating” Tool

The rise in popularity of blogger outreach prompts the emergence of sites based entirely on this concept. There are now a number of services to help you find, research, contact and track your outreach effort. Much like dating sites for bloggers and marketers, services like BlogDash, eCarin and GroupHigh help you find relevant influencers and allow you to rate them, group them, contact them and follow up.

5. Utilize Good Ol’ Fashion Google

With all the Google products in existence, it’s no wonder that more than one can aid with blogger outreach. The obvious choice, Google Blog Search, is where you can search keywords relevant to your business as well as your business name. This allows you to locate and contact those who may already be an evangelist of your product (see Tip #1 above). Similarly, Google Analytics can reveal your product preachers through reports of blogs that have linked back to your site. Need just a simple blog suggestion tool? Google Reader suggests blogs that address the topics you care about and never seems to run out of recommendations.

Follow these five tips and you will find many relevant bloggers, but unless you properly organize your findings, you will end up overwhelmed and discouraged. From the very beginning of your hunt, list all possible candidates in spreadsheet that includes columns for contact email addresses, dates of interaction or engagement, page rank, web statistics and, once a post is uploaded, back links. Implement these tactics in an organized manner and you will be well on your way to a successful and pleasant blogger outreach effort.

http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business